


A visit to the gallery...

by DetectiveIdiotBoy



Series: Idiot Savant [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: (maybe), Angst, Blood, Gen, Gore, Graphic Description, Guro, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Medical Torture, Needles, Serial Killers, Torture, Violence, Whump, flaying, skinned alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:28:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29761041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetectiveIdiotBoy/pseuds/DetectiveIdiotBoy
Summary: “I had some issues with a guy up north of here - goes by the name Pickman.” Hancock leaned forward and picked up a canister of Jet to huff. “The man’s got some serious issues. Fucked up in the head ain’t even begin to describe it.”“So you’re hiring me to finish the job for you?” MacCready clarified, pushing thoughts of his old frienemy out of his mind.“I just want confirmation that Pickman ain’t practicin’ his ‘creative processes’ anymore,” Hancock said. “I don’t know if the psycho is even still alive or not, but if he is and he’s the one makin’ my guys disappear, I want him dead.---A few months after MacCready narrowly dodges death at Mass Pike he gets himself into trouble again when he takes a job from Hancock to take care of a serial killer with an affinity for the arts. Will he manage to avoid being skinned alive by this maniac, or end up as another unfortunate piece in Pickman's exhibit?
Series: Idiot Savant [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2031331
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	A visit to the gallery...

**Author's Note:**

> _Big_ disclaimer to mind the tags here, friends. This one is gorey, and absolutely warrants the explicit rating. I finally wrote something more fucked up than my other works so far...
> 
> This one takes place between 'Sins of The Father' and 'Everyone Dies for Their Own Sin' but you don't need to have read either to enjoy this one. I had a lot of fun with it, despite how graphic it gets.

When MacCready woke up, there were two things he noticed immediately - his head hurt like a bitch and he couldn’t remember what had happened last night. This was far from the first time that had happened - by the time he was 15 MacCready considered himself to be the master of blacking out at a good party, though that had been before he built up enough of a tolerance to alcohol that he didn’t feel its effects. It had been a long time since MacCready had gotten himself so fucked up he passed out.

But, the more awake he became, the more he was beginning to realize he probably hadn’t done this to himself. For starters - he had no idea how he would have managed to buckle his own wrists down to an ancient medical gurney. 

“What the…” He muttered, shifting in place over the leather-clad cushions. His vision was blurry and doubled, and his head spun with every movement. MacCready stopped moving and groaned, worried he might throw up and choke to death since he wasn’t able to so much as move his head. He squeezed his eyes closed, concussion making itself known through slowed thinking and horrendous throbbing in his temples. 

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

MacCready peeled his eyes open, moving his head slowly to face the direction where the sound came from. The room was dark, but there was a single source of light emanating from a lamp in the corner. The dull brightness of the lamp seared his eyes as he looked at the back-lit figure in front of it - a man, it seemed to be, holding something thin and metal that he was polishing with a cloth. Creepy didn’t even begin to describe what he was looking at; a half-remembered memory popped up in his brain that told him he was in danger and needed to get out fast if he wanted to survive. 

Unfortunately, the straps on his wrists weren’t there for show. MacCready pulled against them, finding that under the white sheet that covered his body similar straps were fastened around his upper arms, neck, thighs, waist, and ankles. His heart rate began to pick up in pace as he realized just how helpless he was. 

A low, gleeful laugh came from the figure by the lamp. He put down the blade he had been fondling onto a metal tray filled with all kinds of medical goodies - bone saws, scalpels, tweezers, needles, stimpacks; all of them stained red from repetitive use. It was like some kind of nightmare-turned-reality. 

“W-what the hell is going on,” MacCready said, trying to make himself sound angry instead of terrified. To be fair, it didn’t matter that he failed miserably; there wasn’t much intimidation factor to be found in a man with a concussion tied up in a dark room. “Where am I?” When his question was again ignored by his captor in favor of inspecting his tools, MacCready tried again. “Who are you?” 

“I think you’re well aware of who I am,” The man answered simply, selecting a thick needle from the tray and threading a long tube into its backside. “I believe you came here looking for me specifically.” 

MacCready watched in rapt attention as the man messed with the needle, an old fear from childhood making itself known in his brain. He closed his eyes, feeling there was nothing to be gained from giving himself a panic attack while at this guy’s mercy. He had to think - he came here himself, looking for someone. What had happened to end him up like this?

Slowly, the memories came crawling back. His evening at the statehouse with Hancock and his crew, sipping beers while the mayor and his guards got high on a medley of chems and cleaning supplies. It wasn’t often he got personal invitations to party with Hancock - the ghoul liked him well enough, and the two bonded over their time as ‘mayor’s in their respective patch-work colonies, but they were hardly friends. MacCready had figured there were ulterior motives at play, and he had been right on the money. 

_ “So, how’s the recovery goin’?” Hancock asked him lazily, tapping the tip of a Med-X needle to test the point. MacCready looked away from the syringe as the ghoul shot up. “Are you back in the market for some work?”  _

_ MacCready snorted, finishing off the last of his beer in a quick swig. “I’ve been ready for some work for over a month now, the problem’s been finding a client with enough caps to be worth my time.” He raised a brow at Hancock, hoping that he wasn’t so high up he couldn’t take the hint.  _

_ Hancock smiled, one eye narrowed and the other blown wide as he rode the beginnings of his new high. “You charge a lot for a hired gun, Mac - a lot of people would do your line of work for free. Maybe you should consider lowering your prices.” _

_ “Sure, you could get some junky to run around with a knife to solve your problems - but ten to three odds says you watch him get shot in the head in the first five minutes,” MacCready mimed pointing a pistol to his temple and blowing his brains out. “You pay for quality with me. Sides, it ain’t cheap livin’ in Goodneighbor.”  _

_ “Hah, you think it’s rough on the wallet here try makin’ it in Diamond City, or at the Hill,” Hancock snickered. “But I dig ya. You’re an entrepreneur, I can respect that.” Hancock threw a hand lazily over MacCready’s shoulder. The gesture was way too familiar, but MacCready toughed through it for what was coming next. “What would you say to a couple hundred caps lining your pockets over the next few days?” _

_ “I’d ask who you want me to kill, and to double the payment when the job is done,” MacCready replied. That got a laugh out of Hancock and gave MacCready just the opening he needed to slip out from under the high ghoul’s arm.  _

_ “You got a set of balls on you, MacCready - I like it,” He said, “I’ll give you a hundred and fifty now for supplies, and then two when the problem’s been taken care of.”  _

_ So 350? It wasn’t a bad offer - more than his going rate for regular protection, for sure. It would cost at least fifty to restock ammo and stimpacks, but considering the upfront charge was triple that, MacCready had a feeling the job wasn’t going to be as simple as getting rid of some back street gangsters. _

_ “I’ll consider it,” MacCready said, not yet ready to commit but not wanting to shrug the job off with that kind of money on the line. “What are you gonna have me do? It’s not gonna be another crap-shoveling-” Language. MacCready sighed at himself. He’d have to put another cap in the swear jar when he got back to his room at the Third Rail. “It’s not clean-up duty, right?” _

_ “Nah, nothin’ like that. This will be fun, promise,” Hancock said with a wave of his hand. His voice was far more serious now that they were finally getting around to business. “I had some issues with a guy up north of here - goes by the name Pickman.” Hancock leaned forward and picked up a canister of Jet to huff. “The man’s got some serious issues. Fucked up in the head ain’t even begin to describe it.”  _

_ MacCready frowned. “What did this guy do to get on your bad side?”  _

_ “See, Pickman’s got this little… hobby of his,” Hancock said while he shook the tiny inhaler to mix the contents. “Couple of months ago I noticed a few of our chem lines were disappearing out by the old art gallery. I sent someone out to investigate and got back a report that Pickman’s been kidnapping raiders and pickin’ them apart for ‘inspiration’ for his art. Last guy he had wasn’t even dead by the time Pickman had gotten to removing his liver, from what I heard.” _

_ “Jesus,” MacCready muttered. That was messed up - not the worst thing he’d ever heard of happening in the lawless wastes, not by a long shot, but still not a comforting thought that a genuine pre-war-grade serial killer was living just up the street from him.  _

_ “Yeah, my thoughts exactly,” Hancock said before taking a pause to suck in the hit of Jet. _

_ “So you’ve already sent someone out to take care of him?” MacCready asked, “I don’t get it - did he not come back or somethin’?”  _

_ “Nah, he came back alright,” Hancock chuckled. “But this guy… he isn’t as… through as you are. I told him to go find out what was happenin’ up there and he did just that. The implication was that he was supposed to make the murders stop - and they did for a while - but I have a sneaking suspicion that Pickman ain’t as dead as I had hoped.” _

_ MacCready sucked in a breath. There was only one person stupid enough to take a job from Hancock and leave it half-finished - and only one person charming enough to get away with it. “Nate…” _

_ Hancock snorted. “Can’t slip nothin’ past you, can I?” He said. “Yeah, our favorite lucky charm was the one I sent out there to fix things. You know how he is - Nate’s got a soldier's instinct, but he doesn’t have a killer’s spirit. I stopped asking him to do jobs that required a few holes dug a while ago.” _

_ MacCready took a deep breath and resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. Yep, that was Nate alright - send the man out to kill a psychopath and he’ll try to negotiate with him. If it wasn’t for his little lucky streak Nate wouldn’t have made it past Concord without nine or ten bullet holes in the back of his skull. _

_ MacCready’s feelings on Nate were… complicated, to say the least. He still thought the guy was a hypocritical jackass, but he wasn’t as bad as MacCready had talked himself into believing he was. When the chips were down, he just wasn’t the kind of guy who would feed you to the wolves to save his own skin. Out here that was rare, even for the people who could afford it.  _

_ “So you’re hiring me to finish the job for you?” MacCready clarified, pushing thoughts of his old frienemy out of his mind.  _

_ “I just want confirmation that Pickman ain’t practicin’ his ‘creative processes’ anymore,” Hancock said. “I don’t know if the psycho is even still alive or not, but if he is and he’s the one makin’ my guys disappear, I want him dead. Either way, I’ll give you the two hundred when you get back.” _

_ “Fair enough,” MacCready said. Honestly, it was more than fair - this was the kind of contract he’d been looking for for the past month. He was down to his last twenty caps, and that wasn’t even counting what he needed to send back home by the end of the week. 350 was exactly what he needed right now, and getting back to work after the incident with Winlock and Barnes would be a nice bonus too. “I’ll head out tomorrow. You got that 150 on hand?”  _

_ With a handshake and an exchange of caps for services, MacCready was back in the game and ready to hunt down his killer. _

Except, in the end, MacCready hadn’t been the one who’d been doing the hunting. He walked into the gallery early in the afternoon to find out just exactly what Nate had seen that scared the piss out of him enough to walk off the job. It wasn’t just detailed paintings Pickman made to chronicle his adventures in human vivisection - there were sculptures too. MacCready had seen human bodies used as decorations to scare people off from places like raider dens and gunner hideouts, but this was something else entirely. The bodies were mutilated and arranged with a level of dedication and care that had an eerie ‘welcoming’ effect rather than just as a warning sign to intruders. 

MacCready gagged when he opened a door and saw a scene of a teddy bear holding a saw positioned over a man whose every tendon had been severed and stapled to the wall. The horrific part that left MacCready pants-shittingly terrified was the man’s face. The dead raider’s eyes were wide, caught forever in a state of horror and agony with the lids torn off. From the nose down, the skin had been stripped from his face, leaving MacCready staring at a long row of bloody human teeth parted in the middle of the poor things death cries. 

Yeah, so maybe MacCready was a little more sympathetic as to why Nate didn’t want to fuck with this guy. MacCready kept his shotgun in his shaking hands for the rest of his exploration, kicking open doors with his finger wrapped around the trigger just in case someone was left alive in the room. He found several holotapes scattered around the ‘dissection chambers’ and he made the mistake of plugging one in to the working terminal in the upstairs apartment. 

_ ‘Oh god. Oh god please, please just kill me! Please!!!’ There was a mechanical whirr, the sound of quiet laughter and screams. ‘NO!”  _

_ ‘Don’t pass out on me just yet - I want to see the look on your face when you see what your intestines look like.’ _

_ ‘Please!! Make it stop!!!!” _

MacCready didn’t play any of the other tapes. 

He had walked into the gallery with every intention of putting down whatever sick bastard he’d found inside - if not for caps then on principle alone - but now MacCready was certain he was going to shoot anything he found still alive in this place. He wasn’t leaving anything to chance; he needed to get the kill and get out  _ fast _ . 

He searched the place top to bottom without finding a single trace of life. No cans of food, no empty soda bottles, no Pickman - the bodies were still fresh, though, confirming Hancock’s suspicion that Pickman was still practicing his ‘art.’ Could MacCready have missed him? He didn’t want to have to come back to this place - he certainly wasn’t staying here to wait for Pickman to come back. 

It was on his second sweep-through that he found the hole in the wall leading to the basement. It had been entirely on accident - MacCready had leaned against the wall to adjust his shoe and the boards just caved in. Huh. So this was what it was like to be Nate. 

MacCready squeezed between the walls and found himself in what appeared to be Pickman’s ‘art studio.’ He should have guessed there was a place like this - the ‘pieces’ in the gallery were Pickman’s finished works, but somewhere there had to be the place where he ‘assembled’ his masterpieces. 

MacCready stepped over a pile of severed raider heads in various states of decay. Buckets filled with red liquid that smelled too rancid to be paint were stacked against the wall. In the middle of the room, there was a single Easel with a half-painted canvas on it. MacCready stepped forward, morbid curiosity getting the better of him. The painting wasn’t half bad, in the sense that it really did capture what it looked like to see a person with their throat cut and their eyes gouged out. MacCready had become somewhat desensitized by then, but he still swallowed back bile as he took in the contours of the flayed man’s unfinished thighs. 

That was where the clear memories ended. The next thing MacCready knew he was face down on the concrete floor with his head split open by a rebar club. The strike wasn’t enough to knock him out, but it dazed him just long enough to lose his gun entirely and struggle to reorient himself. By the time he was back on his feet - or more accurately, on all floors fighting vertigo as his body struggled to distinguish up from down - arms had wrapped around his neck and a chemical-laced cloth shoved over his mouth and nose. MacCready screamed and struggled, but that only made his intake of whatever chemical he had been being drugged with all the worse. 

“Sh… sh sh sh,” MacCready remembered hearing whispered just above his ear as his muscles went lax and his vision fizzled out. “That’s it…” 

MacCready took a sharp breath in, reeling as the memories came back all at once. The silhouette - Pickman - had finished attaching the dull needle to its tubing and was now approaching MacCready where he was strapped down helplessly to the gurney. 

“Pickman,” He said dumbly, watching in mute horror as the serial killer pulled back the sheet around his left arm and felt for a vain. “You… you’re-”

“The artist whose collection you were admiring?” Pickman said, tone casual and smooth as if he and MacCready were strangers who’d met on the street. “That I am.” 

“You’re a fucking monster is what you are,” MacCready returned, voice carrying a lot more bite than it had any right to while his head was still swimming and throbbing with a concussion. The swear was tolerable, MacCready decided. Somethings in this world are awful enough to justify the prefix of ‘fucking’.

MacCready hissed as a sharp pinch went through his arm - like a butter knife dug down to the muscle. It ached, but it was far from the worst agony he was in - or about to be in, by the look of things. 

“A monster, am I?” The man said, running his fingers along the tube that was connected to MacCready. The clear plastic turned red as his blood was stolen from him by the murderer. The sight left MacCready sick to his stomach and cold with dread. What on earth was this guy gonna do to him? “I don’t think I’m a monster - I abhor murder and violence just like everyone else. I just find more...  _ creative _ solutions to the problem of evil.”

“But you… you kill people,  _ a lot _ of people,” MacCready pointed out. Pickman looked at MacCready with a pitying gaze as he let the tube fall from his fingers. MacCready heard a soft ‘drip, drip, drip,’ that he quickly realized was his own blood hitting the bottom of an empty paint can. He gagged, a shudder pulling through his entire body. 

“You say that as though you’re free of sin yourself,” Pickman said, turning around to pull forward his tray of surgical goodies that he’d laid out on a portable shelf. MacCready’s eyes caught on the sharp blades and pointed needles that were there, skin prickling with terrified anticipation. “But I know, for a fact, that you’re not so innocent.” 

“I… I’ve n-never…” MacCready’s voice tapered out of its own accord, dying off into a pathetic, horrified whimper as Pickman selected the second scalpel to the right and held it up into the light. MacCready had meant to say something along the lines of he’d never mutilated a person for sick kicks, but somehow he didn’t think he was going to win that argument. 

Turns out, he was right, because Pickman guessed exactly where his thoughts were headed and answered him without looking away from his knife. “You may have never found pleasure in what you do as I have, but that certainly did not stop you from committing your crimes, did it?” 

“I’m not a murderer,” MacCready said, voice barely more than a whisper as he watched Pickman run the blade along the edge of a stone, sharpening the deadly tool.

“Aren’t you?” Pickman asked calmly. “That tattoo you think no one notices you had removed begs to differ.”

MacCready knew what Pickman was talking about. He’d gone through the painful, extensive process of having his brand as a gunner taken off, but the skin never grew back right, and the ink was still there if you got close. He swallowed, feeling he still had a point to argue but not the voice to make it. He had been a Gunner, and he’d done some despicable things in his life, but none of it compared to what he’d seen in this place. Not even the worst of the bloodthirsty sadists he’d met when he was at his lowest held a candle to Pickman’s level of cruelty. Even if they wanted to, none of them were this skilled; to do what Pickman did took practice - not even most surgeons could pull off something like this. 

“You can argue until the moment I bleed you out, none of that will erase your sins,” Pickman turned back around, words punctuated by the slow drip of MacCready’s blood into the tin can. MacCready stared back at the insane man, eyes wide and following the blade in his hand. “You may have noticed that my subjects all had one thing in common - they’re all  _ sinners _ .” He said, reaching down to pull back the stained sheets that had been covering MacCready’s strapped-up body. 

For the first time, MacCready realized he was naked. With the exception of his underwear - for what little mercy that was - he’d been relieved of all his clothes. Goosebumps covered his arms and chest. He didn’t like feeling exposed at the best of time, and the fact that Pickman had taken the time to strip him meant absolutely nothing good. 

“Raiders, gunners, drug dealers, rapists, slavers,” Pickman continued on, tracing a path over MacCready’s collarbone with the eye of a doctor examining a patient - or maybe a butcher carving meat. MacCready’s mouth was too dry to swallow, all the moisture seeming to migrate from his throat to his eyes. “I was born without a soul, you know? I’ll never see the light of God - but you people, you  _ animals  _ masquerading as human beings - you make me sick.” 

MacCready followed Pickman’s steady hand expertly grasping the scalpel. Sweat ran down his forehead and chest - his arm  _ ached _ where the needle was buried into it and leaking his fluids in steady, rhythmic  _ ‘drip, drip, drip, drip’ _ s. Somewhere in the part of his mind that hadn’t fully grasped what was happening to him, he thought about the kind of infections being stuck like that through the arm would bring. 

“What are you going to do to me?” He asked before he could think better of it. He knew it was a mistake when he saw the dim lamplight reflect in the wide, manic eyes of his captor. 

“I’m glad you asked,” he said with all the delight of a nerdy child asked to describe his favorite comic. MacCready felt lightheaded as he saw the scalpel flip delicately in Pickman’s skilled fingers so the handle was pointed at MacCready’s chest. He ran the dull end from one shoulder to the next, tracing out a ‘v-neck’ shape along his bare breast. “The ideal cut goes between your collarbones dipping down to your sternum, but it’s quite difficult to do all in one go, so I’ll begin by scoring your skin here,” He poked at the tender flesh that just barely stuck out from under the leather strap across his throat. “Then, I’ll move lower to your armpits and just under your ribs; If I do this right, I should be able to remove the skin from your chest in a single stroke.” 

“You…” MacCready’s mind drew a blank, so completely horror-struck that he couldn’t even comprehend what was being said, even though he knew without a doubt what Pickman was trying to tell him. “You’re going to… to…”

“Skin you alive, yes,” Pickman replied cheerfully. The terror on MacCready’s face made the killer laugh with unrestrained glee. “Ah, there it is - I’ve been wanting for good inspiration lately. I made a promise to a friend that I wouldn’t do this anymore, but it’s been hard to find my muse without adequate models.”

MacCready shook so hard the gurney beneath him rattled. He stared at the laughing, joyful face looming over him as Pickman described the single worst torture imaginable and exactly how it would apply to MacCready.

“You see, I’ll need to collect a large swath of your flesh if I’m to use it,” Pickman continued. “The skin has a tendency to shrink and shrivel during the tanning process, and I want to be able to capture as much of you as possible with this piece. Your face as my inspiration, your blood as my paint, and your skin as my canvas.” 

His horror reached a tipping point and MacCready began to thrash senselessly, silent at first but slowly retaking his voice as he fought his bonds with all the fever of a deadman. If he didn’t find some way to get out of his situation  _ now  _ he was going to be one for sure. Pickman wrinkled his nose, annoyed with his prey’s panic, but neither surprised nor perturbed. He winced as MacCready screamed, and put the scalpel back down with a metal  _ ‘thunk’ _ so he could grab a wad cloth and wedge it between MacCready’s teeth. 

“I hate it when they’re noisy before we’ve even begun,” He complained. “Save your voice for later; I look forward to hearing you scream and beg for the mercy of death.”

MacCready choked on his spit as he screamed around the gag, continuing to thrash for as long as he could sustain it. When it became apparent that he wasn’t going to return to his senses any time soon, Pickman sighed and tugged at the needle still stuck through MacCready’s arm. He adjusted it, and suddenly the steady ‘drip, drip, drips’ changed to the sound of a thin jet of water hitting the side of a bucket. MacCready realized that it wasn’t water, but his own blood that was leaving him in such volumes, right around the time that his vision spotted and he lost all will to move.

“Tsk,” Pickman clicked his tongue as he readjusted the needle, returning the blood-letting tube back to its original slow place. The dripping noise was no longer metallic and clanking, but rather wet - the blood freshly leaving him plopping to newly founded pools of hemoglobin. “I wanted to avoid bleeding you too much before I’ve started taking you apart. You’d be surprised just how much fluid a human can lose before they die, but the process of removing the epidermis causes an extra loss that doesn’t lend to a long life. And I do want you alive for this.”

MacCready was weak and dizzy. Spots danced at the edge of his vision and the ever-present ache at the back of his skull turned to a dull throb that barely had a pulse. He was breathing in labored gasps, strugglings still in frantic twitches against the straps tying him in place. He was on the verge of blacking out; he knew this was the only chance he was going to get to escape with his life, but part of him wondered if passing out now might be for the best. He thought about the tape he’d heard in his investigation, the man pleading for death from the sadistic bastard who was currently selecting his tools to do the same to MacCready. 

He closed his eyes, finding that tears were already there and flowing freely. He shook in grief and terror as he felt the shadow of Pickman loom over his prone form. 

“Now then,” MacCready felt the cold, sharp tip of a scalpel kiss his skin just below his shoulder. “Let’s begin, shall we?” 

MacCready opened his eyes, staring into Pickman’s excited, uncaring eyes as he shook his head one final time. There was no pleading with someone like this, but MacCready couldn’t help trying to find some mercy for the man not to do the thing he was about to do. There was none; the man really didn’t have a soul in him. 

MacCready’s teeth bit into the gag hard when the knife finally found its way under his skin. He whined, feeling the nerves slowly cut by the drag of Pickman’s blade. He felt wetness seap from the painful trail that Pickman left with the scalpel, flowing down his chest and collecting at the crease where his bareback met the cushions. He tried to arch his back, to struggle and move and get away from the pain of being butchered alive, but the straps held him fast and Pickman had locked the wheels of the gurney so MacCready could do little more than twitch. 

The feeling lasted an eternity. It was hard to tell if Pickman was intentionally going slow or if time had come to a standstill while MacCready writhed in agony. There was no one alive that deserved to be tortured like this; even though MacCready knew he was scum of the earth - little more than a hypocrite and a paid killer, he was hard-pressed to figure out what sin he’d committed that was so heinous as to deserve this. 

The blade finally found its end just above MacCready’s breastbone, exactly like Pickman described. He felt the pull of the metal as the bloody knife was pulled out of his flesh, leaving him with a blood-soaked line that he didn’t have to see to be disgusted by. It wasn’t the worst pain MacCrady had ever been in, but rather a preview of what was to come. He already anticipated the feeling of having his skin pulled back from his muscles. The gorey, grizzly image was enough to drive his consciousness from him for a brief moment. 

It wasn’t fair. MacCready could barely find space in his head to think something so stupidly obvious, and yet the thought was there. He didn’t want to die here, not after he’d survived so much bullshit to make it this far. He couldn’t go out like this, none of this could be real, he couldn’t die without even the hope of seeing Duncan again. 

“One down,” Pickman’s voice rang from somewhere far away. MacCready was jolted back into full awareness with a stab into his left collarbone. He screamed, voice muffled into nothingness by the rag stuffed into his mouth. “Let’s do another, shall we?” 

MacCready’s consciousness dipped again, unable to stand being aware as the second line was drawn across his chest. He cried, sobbing blindly as the blade dug into his skin and scored it to be removed. 

_ “Pickman!!”  _

The cutting stopped. MacCready blinked, then winced as the scalpel was roughly torn from the midway point between his shoulder and chest. A morbid of him lamented its removal - he didn’t want this to drag on any longer than it had to, and the idea of feeling the knife slide back into his skin where it had already done so much damage was just too much to bear - but as his mind caught up with his surroundings, MacCready found it in him to question the livid voice that had just called the name of his tormentor. 

His vision was a blur of tears and darkness, but MacCready could just barely make out a silhouette in the doorway. A pistol flashed in the dim light of the lamp. Pickman yelled something, rushing at the man in the door. MacCready’s ears tuned out the violent, loud noises to focus on the quiet dripping away of his blood into the pail below him. He’d lost so much blood - too much, by now. His mutilated shoulder poured torrents of hot liquid down his body and bathed him in his own fluids. MacCready’s eyes fell shut against the ache in his upper body that came to consume him, and the world went black to the tune of a skirmish between Pickman and the man with the gun and the sounds of his life seeping out of him. 

\---

“-Cready? MacCready? Come on, can you hear me?” 

MacCready opened his eyes again to the welcomed sight of literally anywhere that wasn’t the art gallery basement. The sunset streamed in through the broken windows, bathing him and his rescuer in golden light. Too bright - the glare seared his eyes, but it was a welcomed pain.

“Thank god, I was worried you weren’t gonna wake up.”

MacCready was pulled into sitting up straight by a familiar callous hand. He followed the appendage up to its owner; the gentle face of the world’s luckiest idiot stared back at him. 

“Careful,” Nate warned him as MacCready tried to pull away to sit up on his own. Nate steadied him so he didn’t go tumbling off the side of the couch he found himself sat on. “You’ve lost a lot of blood there. Nick’s gone to find you a blood pack - that tattoo of yours actually came in useful for a change. AB positive is real easy to replace.”

MacCready felt a roll of nausea pass through him at the mention of his tattoo. He had no idea how one mistake made two years ago had managed to fuck him over at every turn ever since, but he didn’t think there was ever going to be a time he was truely grateful for the damn thing. 

MacCready shuddered, finding himself suddenly very cold and very shaky. He wrapped his arms around himself and found that he’d been put back in his duster while he was out, though not his shirt or pants. Shame burned his cheeks, and if there had been any chance of him meeting the gaze of the man who had now saved his life twice in one month, it was gone when he realized Nate had seen him pretty much naked. 

“Here,” Nate said, reaching off the couch to offer MacCready a two-hundred-year-old blanket that had more holes than fabric. It was better than nothing, and MacCready grabbed it greedily to wrap around himself and cover up as much of himself as possible. Nate at least had the decency to look as embarrassed as MacCready with the whole situation. It could have been a trick of the light, but MacCready could have sworn he was blushing. 

With a little life coming back into his frigid limbs, MacCready found it in him to swallow around the bruises in his throat and speak. “W-what happened?” He asked, voice just as horse as he expected after screaming for what felt like hours. 

Instead of answering right away, Nate scrambled off the couch and pulled a can of water out from his pack. He popped the tab and handed it off to MacCready, who was in no position to refuse. He sipped slowly, knowing the drill by now. After trauma, drink slowly, or else you’ll un-drink that water just as fast as you put it in. 

“Take these,” Nate said, offering up a dented box of crackers. “Nick should be back soon, but we gotta keep you awake until then. I don’t want you going into shock between then and now.”

“Thanks,” MacCready mumbled, grabbing for the junk food. He fished out a handful of mealy stale crackers and shoved them into his mouth. He alternated between eating and drinking until his mouth was clear and he could speak again. “But that doesn’t really answer my question.” 

Nate frowned. “Hancock told me he sent you after Pickman,” Nate explained. “When I told him about the gallery, I guess I forgot to mention the fact that he only attacks people he doesn’t like, like raiders or…” He trailed off sheepishly

“Gunners,” MacCready finished for him, seeing no sense in skirting the issue. “Thanks for not leaving me to the wolves, I guess.” He grabbed another handful of crackers and shoved them between his teeth. MacCready didn’t think he’d ever felt less hungry in his life, but he was still on the verge of seeing stars and Nate was at least right about one thing - it wouldn’t help him to pass out after losing so much blood.

Instinctively, MacCready’s hand went up to check where he remembered the worst of his injuries to be. Unsurprisingly, they were gone, though the skin under his fingers was pink and tender.

“Yeah, we had a few stimpacks on us when we found you,” Nate said, stating the obvious in just the kind of way that made MacCready want to punch him. The flight of anger gave him a head rush, and he wobbled in place. Nate reached out to stabilize him, clasping his arms so he didn’t topple over. “Just hang on a little longer. Nick’s gonna be back any second now.” 

“I’m fine,” MacCready growled, though his bluff was in vain; He was pale as death and only barely able to keep his spine straight. If he had to stand right now, he’d pass out immediately. In fact, he realized quickly that the only thing keeping him from collapsing at the moment was Nate’s strong hands wrapped around his thin arms. 

Thankfully, he didn’t have to keep the act up for too long. Moments later the door opened and in came Nick carrying a bag of supplies and, most notably, a plastic sack filled with red fluids proudly labeled with the same “AB+” that had been drawn on his forehead all that time ago. 

“How’s he holdin’ up?” Nick asked, not at an angle to judge MacCready’s current state of consciousness.

“Better,” Nate said, turning to face his new partner. “I got him awake and he’s eaten something.”

“Good,” Nick said, dropping his bag by the couch and kneeling down to set up the transfusion. “Weathers was the only doc I could find at Bunker Hill - he’s a quack but I've never seen him sell anything that didn’t work as advertised, even if he overcharges.”

MacCready didn’t like being talked about as though he weren’t there, but in Nick’s defense, he was in quite the state. Half alive and barely able to keep his eyes open, he probably looked even less up for conversation than he felt. 

MacCready allowed the detective to roll up his sleeve and let Nate lean him against the back of the couch, but as soon as he saw the needle come out of the medical supplies bag he felt his first piece of resistance since being rescued. The memory of Pickman’s long, dull needle stuck in his veins and draining him was too recent, and without even thinking he pulled away from the pair of men trying to help him. 

“Calm down!” Nate said, grabbing him by the arms and practically dragging him back into place. MacCready wasn’t thinking - the only thing he could understand was that they were going to hurt him and that fear was all-consuming. In the end, it took the combined efforts of both Nate and Nick to keep him still while he thrashed senselessly. Neither of them were particularly good at providing comfort, but thankfully MacCready was just too exhausted to fight them both. He fell into a limp, trembling heap as Nick took his arm as gently as possible while Nate held his head and kept him from looking at his arm.

“It’s okay, Mac, we’re trying to help you,” Nate told him. MacCready wrinkled his nose, but he just didn’t have the energy to be mad at Nate for making stupid statements right now. Nate smiled, laughing awkwardly. “Yeah, I know, you hate me. Just give us five minutes to get you back on your feet and I’ll let Nick take you home.” 

“I don’t hate you,” MacCready said. Nate’s smile dropped, replaced by a semi-stunned expression. To be fair, It was just as shocking to MacCready to hear himself say those words. Of all the things to say at a time like this, how did he settle on that?

Before either of them could respond Nick took his brief opportunity of serenity in the room to stick the needle into his arm. MacCready screamed like he was shot - for all the terror he felt, he might as well have been. In less than an instant, he was back to being restrained as he thrashed in a state of absent panic; the fact that he couldn’t move sent yet another trill of danger down his spine and only served to make his struggles worse.

“Calm down, calm down!” Nate yelled, panicking himself by MacCready’s outburst. “Jesus, Mac,  _ please _ stop moving. We’re trying to help.” 

The plea cut through MacCready’s senseless fear and actually managed to get him to respond. “I know- I fucking-  _ know _ !” He said through grit teeth. He managed to quit his thrashing by tensing up and gritting his teeth, sucking in air by the lungful through his nose. He was embarrassed, and that made him angry, which made him feel even worse because if it wasn’t for these two he’d still be tied up in that psychopath’s basement. MacCready held his breath, closed his eyes, and forced himself to ride through the terror; he swore on the Atom itself if Nate said something stupid like ‘just breathe’ or ‘take it easy’ he was going to throttle the man, savior or no. 

When the dust settled MacCready found himself slowly warming up and underway too much scrutiny for his state of undress. He sighed, letting the air out through his nose as he opened back up his eyes and refused to look at either of the other people in the room with him. “What happened to Pickmen?” He asked finally, deciding that question took president over his desire to know what happened to his pants - though only just barely. 

“Dead,” Nate said, face falling into something far more serious than his usual moronic, empty-headed stare. “I should have killed him when I found him; he told me he would never kill again, and I just fucking believed him.” 

MacCready blinked. He couldn’t say he was surprised - honestly, what else had he expected from this idiot? - but disappointed didn’t even begin to cut into the emotion he was feeling right then. He almost  _ died _ . Hell, there were plenty of people before him that didn’t have Nate’s luck to pull them out of a bind. In the end, it  _ was _ Nate who got him out of the mess he’d created for the merc, so MacCready just couldn’t find it in him to rehash his old lecture about mercy with the thick-headed man.

Apparently, Nick did not feel the same. 

“I could have told you that was a load of crap from the start,” Nick grumbled, still holding up the blood bag as it emptied into MacCready’s wrist. “I’ve met plenty of guys like that in my line of work. They can’t stop killing any more than a deathclaw can.”

“Yeah, lesson learned,” Nate said, voice a mix of shame and self-directed upset. Well, at least  _ something _ finally stuck with him - even if came at the expense of several (maybe not so innocent) lives and MacCready’s sanity. It felt weird when MacCready realized that the only two times he’d ever seen Nate take a step towards becoming self-aware were when MacCready’s life was on the line. Last he checked, the guy hated him, so what did he care if MacCready bit it out in the wastes because Nate decided to let a serial killer walk.

Then again, MacCready had been fairly certain he hated Nate too, but as he’d stated for no reason in particular not too long ago, he didn’t hate him either. 

Whatever their relationship was, MacCready now owed Nate his life a second time. It was hardly a position he’d wanted to find himself in once, much less twice, but at least Nate wasn’t the type who’d make him call on that debt. His selflessness was annoying - bordering on criminally negligent - but at least MacCready would be able to pretend all this never happened at the end of the day. 

He leaned back into the couch and put his fingers to his temples, rubbing against the blooming headache he knew was going to be there in less than an hour. He was already anticipating a night of hard liquor and several packs of cigarettes - paid for in full by Hancock, who sure as shit was giving him every cap he promised after all he’d gone through. Maybe he could convince the ghoul to just give him the alcohol as a bonus for almost getting flayed alive. 

“Look, just-” MacCready started, finally addressing Nate, “next time you find some crazy bullshi- hn, next time you run into some demented wasteland creature and decide it’s time to make friends, try to pick something less dangerous, like a maybe a Super Mutant or something.”

He hadn’t been expecting a laugh for a joke that weak, but something about the way Nate’s face contorted gave him great concern. “I didn’t know you knew about Strong…”

Now  _ that _ got a laugh out of MacCready - he hadn’t expected Nate to play along with his little gag. Maybe it was the bloodloss, or the trauma, but he actually thought Nate’s response was pretty funny. That was, at least, until Nate looked at him like he was insane for laughing. 

MacCready’s face fell immediately. “That… that was a joke, right?” 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed!! I had a lot of fun playing with Pickman's motivations and morals in this one. He seems to have some standards in picking his targets, but absolutely no remorse for what he does. This series has 100% become an excuse to torture MacCready and I'm only a little ashamed of that. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at http://detectiveidiotboy.tumblr.com/. Send me an ask! Say hi! I love to hear from people <3


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